Power Computing provided the information in this article and it was deemed accurate as of 14 November 1997. Apple Computer, Inc. is not responsible for its content. This article is being provided as is and will not be updated in the future.

Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1 is included with Mac OS 7.6 and is supposed to offer support for any CD-ROM drive. Is this true and what happened with the 7.6.1 update?

Before the release of 7.6, the Apple CD-ROM extension has not offered support for the vast majority of CD-ROM drives. Most non-Apple CD-ROM drives, including drives used in Power Computing computers,were not supported by the Apple CD-ROM extension and so could not be mounted by that extension.

Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1, which ships as part of MacOS 7.6, offers generic support for 6x or faster SCSI CD-ROM drives. This enables non-Apple CD-ROMs to mount CDs without the presence of an additional third-party driver such as the FWB CD-ROM Toolkit used by Power Computing.

However, with the release of MacOS 7.6.1, Apple shipped the older driver which does not support the CD-ROM drives that ship with Power Computing's machines. In order for Power Computing customers to be able to use their CD-ROM drive FWB's CD-ROM toolkit must be installed. An alternative is to do a clean install of 7.6 and use the driver that comes with it.

Machines Affected: All